If we go back just ten years ago my life was very different from what it is now. Ten years ago I was hiding from the world around me. I literally was hiding from the law over a traffic violation that I failed to pay, which led to a warrant. I was young and afraid. The real world in front of me was a scary place and I had no clue how to deal with it and make it in a world of sharks and lions. I was terrified of trying and therefore, I hid. Unfortunately this did nothing good for my life and I ended up being homeless. At one point I delightfully gave up all of my possessions and moved forward with the clothes on my back and maybe ten other items.

Drifting through life with no plan was the order of the day and most of the time I was under the influence. Much of my time was spent like a hermit. I hardly went out, I had few friends, I didn’t care for my appearance or health, and I was broke. For awhile I was coasting through a shitty job as a lighting salesman slash stock boy slash driver slash cleaner. The job actually wasn’t shitty, but I would have rather been partying with my friends hiding from people. But I did what I had to do. Once I lost that job because of my lack of caring about anything, I was broke. I couldn’t afford food, I couldn’t afford car or health insurance, and I couldn’t afford a place to live. A few months was spent squatting in my Grandmother’s house that was for sale. I stayed until the last possible day. The heat was turned off and I slept on the hard floor with a sleeping bag I had from my days camping.

Once I was forced to leave because the sale of the home was finalized, I had nowhere to go. Twelve or so days was spent hanging out at my friend’s house on his recliner. His parents had no idea I was sleeping there. Once they found out, I was toast. A few nights were spent sleeping under a bridge and I came to a point of life or death. Do I march forward or quit like a whiny ass punk? Luckily I decided to move forward and caught a break when my Aunt allowed me to stay in her home.

Within a few days I got a job as a landscaper, doing mostly hardscaping work. Which for those who don’t know is the construction of paver patios, walkways, retaining walls, and such. It was hard work but looking back now, I miss it. Being outside in the hot sun working your ass off, sweating like a pig, lifting heavy objects for ten or twelve hours a day was brutal, but it built character and I never felt better. I was doing exactly what our biological DNA is built for. Working with your hands and heavy objects and the weather around you is good for the soul. Sure it sucked when it was a hundred degrees, but the ice cold beer and steak dinner afterwards always sat nice.

About a year of doing this while pretending I was a licensed driver, it was suspended because I failed to appear in court, it was time to face reality. I couldn’t keeping hiding and had to address the law. Thankfully, it was silly and the prosecutor actually laughed about it. My warrant was dismissed and I received a fifty or sixty dollar fine. That was a brutal lesson on why it’s important to get the job done right away and to face my unrealistic and blown out of proportion fears.

Once I got my license back and a car I started working for my mother. For quite awhile I enjoyed the air conditioning, the heat, the convenience of a kitchen and bathroom, and sitting by a computer. That quickly changed when I realized my primal nature was to be active and not sitting all day. I started to get a little stir crazy, even though I wouldn’t accept to believe it.

During my time as a medical biller I met my now wife and we quickly hit it off, got married, and bought a house. All while I wasn’t ready for any of it. Coming from what I went through in the previous years before meeting her, I wasn’t ready to be the man of the house, let alone have a house. But like the day I left my Grandmother’s house to become homeless, I rolled with it and went to work. As life as a new homeowner and married man unfolded I began to realize I wasn’t happy about my work. I didn’t want to be there but knew I had to be. I also knew there was more in store for me and more I can share with others, I had to figure it out.

So I spent most of the first year as a newly wed new homeowner working on becoming a personal trainer. I wanted to help people get in shape. For the past two years I was working out and lost about sixty pounds of fat. I thought I knew what I was doing and wanted a way out of the office and into a world of my “own thing” being my own boss.

Here’s the thing about training and having my own business… I knew nothing. I thought I knew everything but I quickly became aware of the fact that I was in for a big surprise. Through my focused efforts and intense studying I received my personal trainers certification and then promptly hid the fact, out of foolish fear, that I was a trainer. For several months I did nothing about. Finally after some pep talking from my wife, I decided to give it a go and offered my services as a personal trainer for free.

Now this was about five years ago from today. When I first started Activate Fitness, I was scared shitless. I was afraid of the other trainers in town, I was afraid of internet trainers, I was afraid I didn’t have the skills and knowledge to get the job done right. I was afraid of gym owners in a twenty mile radius. I absolutely did not want to take action on my dream. I was frozen in place and had zero dollars to make something from nothing.

But I said FUCK THAT and ultimately took control of my life and destiny and decided to do it anyway. Starting out training others for free or for five dollars is how I had to get things going. It took years for me to finally be able to open my own gym and when I did, I was just as broke as I was when I started. My wife was pregnant and we had no money to lose but we took the risk and I threw myself in the middle of the street, ready to help people change their lives.

I stood there in the arena and took my bumps and my bruises and kept coming back fighting. I failed hundreds of times during my years of owning Activate Fitness. I worked through competition opening all over the place and kept my vision pointed straight ahead, success or die. There is no room for failure. It’s do it or lose it. Mornings came when I said Fuck it and wanted to quit. I waited patiently and silently begging for my wife to throw in the towel on my dream and bring me back to safety. I cried because of the stress of dealing with others. I cried because the numbers weren’t good. I cried because I missed precious time with my family and neglected them, especially my wife, for years.

They can stab me with their sword and dare to declare victory but with courage and hope I won’t stop. I choose to live my life activated. I choose to live awake and alive. I choose to be the one in control and refuse to let others control my life, my way of being, my destiny. I stand here today a man who has seen rock bottom but a man who also braved battle and decided winning was the only option. I refuse to lose. I will not lose.

You can choose to live life activated.

You can choose to take control of your life.

You can choose to chase your dreams and gear up for the war you’ll definitely face.

You can choose to wake up and live awake and alive.

Will you?

Join us here for support and accountability in your journey to living your best life: Your Life Activated

Do you want to be happy and live the best life you can possibly live? You’re going to have to live in the truth of who you are and face reality. This means you’re going to have to take off your mask and stop hiding behind gimmicks and lies. Facing reality is needed for our success and well being. Take a stand now and face reality, face the truth, and be honest.

If we ever want to achieve our goals we’re going to have to understand the fact and face the reality that it is going to be hard. Some people don’t want to hear this. When I talk about weight loss and training, some people want to assume it’s going to be easy. They want to lose all of their extra weight, yesterday. They expect dieting to be easy. They expect the workouts to get easier. The expect the inches to fall off overnight. Then, when it comes to the work involved, they see it’s not easy. Cooking healthy food takes time, waking up early for your workout is hard, and drinking enough water makes you need to use the bathroom nine times more than you used to, it’s hard.

We must face this reality and know what lies ahead of us. A great motivational speaker Les Brown once said “You’ve got to develop an appreciation for something that’s crucial if you want it, that it’s not going to be easy.” If I asked the men and women in the gym who lost over fifteen pounds in thirty days if it was easy what do you think they’d say? Hell no it wasn’t easy. It took discipline and commitment. It took energy and sacrifice.

The problem is many of us don’t want to face this reality. We want the Hollywood way. The commercial media way. The glitz, the glamour, and the convenience. I see young guys opening gyms and wondering why they’re not “crushing it” overnight. That’s because, it’s hard.

Facing reality is a shortcut to success. We must be critical of our goals and beliefs and look at what it’s actually going to take. Can we accomplish our goal with what we have, or are we going to need more? Can you really reach a goal of a strict pull-up if you’re not doing the work needed to be done to get there? No way.

It’s hard to talk about the difficulty you’re going to face when you want to reach a goal. Many people don’t expect it to be that hard. Many people do not want to hear that’s it’s going to be hard. It’s easier to sell someone a pill and tell them it’s going to help them lose ten pounds than it is to tell them losing weight is going to require discipline, energy, effort, planning, sacrifice, and redundancy. We don’t want to bleed, sweat, or cry.

Face reality today and understand it’s going to be hard and that you can do it, because you can do it. Remove the limitations you’ve set in your mind and see the true strength within you. Don’t allow yourself to go by without having the hard conversations and the difficult thoughts. There are many parts of life we choose to ignore or not be honest about. This is disaster and failure waiting in the background. Be honest with where you are, be honest with what you need to get the job done, and then be honest about doing it.

When my wife first got pregnant over four years ago I knew I wasn’t ready to be a Dad. I hardly ever spent time with little kids and my patience for anything in life was a thin sheet of ice. There wasn’t one part of how to take care of a child that I knew. We went to the local Barnes and Noble one day and I bought several books on being a dad and on what to expect when my wife was pregnant. I probably read a chapter of one book and never picked it up again. Going in as a rookie was going to have to work.

Now, I stay home with my munchkins every day and bring them to the gym with me when I have to go workout and train classes. I can tackle any task involved with caring for my children. Each day is a new adventure and it’s surprising how much I learn from my children. Watching them is like sitting down to catch an old school Animal Planet show where the narrator gives a play by play of the lion stalking the gazelle. They certainly are interesting creatures.

But it’s not all fun and games. There are some hard things about being a dad that get to me and as is for any parent anywhere in the world, it’s exhausting. I feel I’m in the position of being home with them every day as a spiritual lesson on how to be a better human being. It’s part of my life experience to be there for them and teach them how to live. But often, I just want to escape.

It’s not easy being dad, or mom. One of the hardest parts is understanding the simple fact that my children are exactly that, children. They’re going to do crazy things. They’re going to destroy my rug, slime up my chairs, throw things, break things, climb things, and turn everything upside down. There will be long nights of screaming kids fighting to not go to sleep. There will be battles at the dinner table when my daughter doesn’t eat her carrots or when my son won’t keep his filthy feet off the table top. Keeping composure is tough. We want to scream and yell to release some of the tension their behavior creates, the hard part is being calm.

One of the toughest challenges of my life has without a doubt been the fight of exhaustion. As an introvert who thrives on alone time and regains mental clarity and energy during that time, being with kids every day drains me completely, by ten o’clock in the morning. It wouldn’t be fair to not say this, but without a quick nap when they nap, I’d probably operate like a Walking Dead zombie. When my kids drain my mental energy it’s easy for me to lose control of my work, my purpose, and my attitude. “I don’t give a fuck” has been a statement I’ve declared many times in the last three years, because quite frankly, when I’m exhausted I honestly do not give a flying fugazi.

Caring for them when they don’t feel well, finding them another option when they don’t want pork, trying to contain them in the play gate at the gym during class, and having an adult conversation in their presence sucks the life out of me. But before I know it, they’ll be in school and gone all the time. They’ll be going to wrestling practice or jiu jitsu class. They’ll be sleeping over friend’s houses and partyting until the sun comes up. They’ll be asking for gas money and looking at colleges.

The hardest part of being dad is that knowing one day, they won’t be hanging on my shoulders and spilling my water on my computer and paperwork. For now, I need to enjoy the moment.

Whatever it is that you want to accomplish in life is within your ability of doing so. You can travel the world. You can get season tickets to your favorite team’s games. You can quit your job and start that business you have been dreaming of. You can sell your house and scale down if that is what you want.

Whatever you want.. you can do, get, see, and live.

There is only one thing stopping you from achieving your wildest dreams and that is your own fear while not having a positive belief in yourself. Many people struggle with overcoming their fear. Napoleon Hill, author of the world’s most successful and highest selling self help book ever Think and Grow Rich, never published Outwitting the Devil while he was alive. He was afraid of criticism and thought he would get a negative response and ruin himself. It’s one of my favorite books.

In High School, I never tried to join the wrestling team. I wanted to, my friends wanted me to, and I enjoyed watching it. My fear of failure, fear of effort, fear of hard work, and fear of people laughing at me prevented me from ever trying. Today I practice Jiu Jitsu and had I wrestled, I’d be much better.

Our minds are our best friends and our greatest enemies. Our mind is capable of conceiving dreams, ideas, goals, solutions, and more. It is also capable of breeding in fear in reasons of why those dreams are stupid, why those ideas will never work, why those goals are outlandish, and how those solutions will result in failure.

But, you can make the right choice, every time. As a coach I have met my share of angry and bitter people. You can smell the anger and bitterness when they walk in the door. Each time I try to engage in positive and encouraging conversation, but those people are hard to crack. They’re stuck in their ways, stuck in their beliefs, and have something deep inside that is bothering them. They’re choosing to keep it in. Instead of accepting whatever trouble it may be, they stoke it with wood and feed their fire. They’re choosing to let it burn. I see this in people throughout life. Instead of choosing to find a solution and doing the work to overcome whatever roadblocks they face, they sit and dwell in fear and negative attitudes.

Most of the time, they don’t believe they can change, they don’t believe they can be happy, they don’t believe their life can be better. And so, they stay stuck and hold it in. Eventually this will manifest as dis-ease, wrinkles, grey hair, weight gain, depression, divorce, loneliness, and more. All because they think they can’t. The truth is, you can.

Ask for help, seek advice from a friend, a family member, or a professional. Notice what troubles your mind and then run towards that trouble and fix it. Accept the past for what it is and concentrate on making today better. Do your workout, write your story, eat your healthy food, go see that friend, make the changes you need to and don’t worry about failure or criticism or change. You can live your best life and you can live the activated life. Do it now.

What wakes you up early in the morning to get your workout in? What helps you stop at the gym on your way home from work instead of going home? What gives you the strength to drive straight past your favorite fast food restaurant and go home where you have healthier food? This power we all have inside of our will is one of the greatest strengths we have as human beings. The power of discipline is one of the strongest tools you have in your toolbox for success.

However, we struggle with building, using, and maintaining discipline in our lives. There are many things in life we should do and many we do that we shouldn’t. The lack of discipline in our lives allows weakness to creep in. A man or woman who is undisciplined with his or her health for years on end will have issues requiring medical attention. If you neglect your body, it will break down and you will get sick. If you neglect using your mind, growing your mind, and exercising your mind, it too will get sick and need medical attention.

Discipline is the path we must follow to create change and success in our life. If you are a religious person, it suits you well to be disciplined in attending service every week. If you want to be successful in finances, it suits you well to be disciplined in personal growth. There are many areas of life in which you’ll need to grow and the only way for that to occur, is disciplined effort.

Nothing will come to us easy and many people can’t accept that. Instead of doing the hard work, they quit. Inside they don’t want to, but they’re afraid and it’s easier to quit. We must work on developing discipline. It is hard but it’s a must. When I began my workout program to lose weight, I was sixty pounds overweight. I worked all day at a job that didn’t keep me awake and at the end of the day I just wanted to go home, but I knew that losing sixty pounds meant more to me than sitting on the couch for an extra hour. I drove straight to the gym right after instead of heading home. The gym was in the complete opposite direction and over twenty minutes away.

What it takes is a very personal look within your heart to see what makes you tick. If you truly do not care about life and longevity, exercise will not be a value to you no matter what you do. All of the effort to making change will do no good. This goes for everything in life. If you don’t value your children, you won’t be disciplined in making the time for them. If you don’t value your relationships, you won’t be disciplined in making time for your loved one.

If you want to lose twenty pounds but can’t find the reason for your lack of discipline, it’s time to go back to the planning book and figure out why you want to achieve those results. That reason, when valued strong enough, is all the fuel your efforts will need to be juiced up with discipline.

When someone fails at my gym, it’s a dagger to the heart. They might not know that I care but I want everyone to be a success. When somebody has a hard time, I want to help. However, we don’t ask for help. There is a silent struggle among us all. People are struggling with many different things in life behind closed doors and nobody ever knows, because we don’t ask for help.

A big part of why you fail is not asking for help. Either we assume we know the answers or we try to find the answers ourselves. Part of my problem is I don’t like to bother people. Asking someone for help, to me, is like asking someone to drop everything and attend to my needs. I can’t do this easily. Why should they help me when they have their own life, their own journey, their own struggle?

But not asking for help will bring failure. We can’t do everything alone. When we’re sick and our efforts to rest and take medicine do not work, we ask our doctor for something stronger, or we ask “what’s wrong?” We get the help we need to feel better. When our cars break down and we can’t figure out why, we get it towed to the service center. We ask them “What’s wrong?” and they help us. When our plumbing breaks and we can’t fix it ourselves, we call a plumber and have them come out. We ask them “What’s wrong?”.

It’s different though when it’s us that needs fixing. We can’t just ask our friends or family “what’s wrong with me?”. But the truth is, we should. We need to. It’s important to ask. We won’t solve our problems or get answers to our important questions if we keep them to ourselves.

Failure is an effort that comes up short, and like I said the other day, it’s not failure if we don’t stop trying. Most of the time, trying again is going to require we ask somebody for help. Why can’t I get my website to work the way I want it to? We ask google. Why not ask your brother or sister who works in the IT department at a major corporation? Why can’t I lose weight? We ask google and get a billion responses. Why not ask your brother or sister or friend who is a personal trainer, a doctor, or a nutritionist?

If you want to succeed you’re going to need to ask people you know for help. You’ll have to spend money with a coach or a service of some sort. You’ll need to invest in yourself. You’ll need to spend time with other people who are there helping you, and then not feel bad about it. Like in the Godfather, Bonasera asks for a favor. He needs help. He goes to his friend and asks for it. He doesn’t care that it’s the Don’s daughters wedding day. He asks. And Bonasera gets his help and the Don knows that one day, the favor will be returned. That is how you succeed. You help someone, and they help you. When you ask.

Last night after a long evening at the gym I headed to the Jiu Jitsu school. Class started at seven thirty in the evening and it would be my first taste of a different type of class, a combat Jiu Jitsu class. Instead of the traditional drilling and rolling class based on the ground game, I’d be learning more self-defense with takedowns and striking. Training for a real life scenario if ever needed. When I arrived it was late and the usual crowd was gone for the evening. There were a few guys rolling and it was quiet. It seemed like nobody was going to stay and I didn’t want the instructor to have to stay for just me.

From the moment I walked in to the moment we started class I was overcome with a sense of fear, much like the first time I had gone to see what Jiu Jitsu was about. I was feeling fear because I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I got there I didn’t know any of the guys finishing up their workout. Were they going to stay? What’s the striking part of the class all about? Did I need my gloves? The questions rolled through my mind and the fear kept getting stronger.

As I sat there I consciously felt the fear and told myself to stop acting silly. It wasn’t my first time at the school and I knew I could handle anything that was thrown my way last night. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was just experiencing a natural thing. Our body is programmed to feel fear. Feeling fear has been one of the most important things to keep the human race alive through our evolution. It was only natural.

I know many men and women who come to my gym filled with fear. You can see it in their eyes. You can sense it coming from their pores and the energy is definitely what many describe as a thin sheet of ice. Several women I’ve met have never returned because their visible fear must have gotten to their mindset. It happens. We all have that fear of the unknown. Men and women alike, when it comes to the gym, are afraid they can’t handle working out. Millions of Americans do not exercise because they’re afraid of what effort it’s going to take and they don’t want to experience failure, again.

Fear will take a strong hold around your neck when you over hype it. When you experience fear and continue to think about it over and over, you make it larger than it actually is. While being afraid of the gym is okay, the truth is there is nothing inside of it that is going to harm you. People are nicer than you know. They won’t laugh at you, they won’t bite you, and you won’t bother them by being a beginner either.

Fear is vital to your survival, yet the way you use fear can be under YOUR control. If you feel that your fears control your life, they will control your life. If you notice the fear, accept it, and begin to consciously handle it, that fear will not prevent you from achieving whatever it is you want to achieve. Stand tall in the face of fear and scream into it with the courage you have within your mind, heart and soul.

As a coach I see people fail all the time. I see people fail to stay on track with their goals. I see people fail to seek the support of those around them who are willing to help. I see people fail to give it time. I see people join my gym with the goals and dreams of getting in shape. They sign up for a twenty one day program and they come once. They fail to return.

I see people join in transformation challenges who start with a bang, only to fizzle out within a week or two, or when something throws them off schedule. I see motivation in their eyes and willingness to try, but something stops them dead in their tracks and they never (or at least from what I see and know) get into the shape they wanted when they started.

But is this really failure? In my opinion, failure consists of quitting your efforts to try. If you get a result that isn’t what you expected it’s not failure but rather a lesson that we must use to help us change something that didn’t work. In business and personal endeavors unrelated to my gym I have gotten poor results many times and failed.

In the past few years I self-published five books. My first book Becoming Awake and Alive sold one copy on Amazon. My second book The Essential Essays of Activate Fitness sold zero. My third book On Living Your Best Life sold one copy on Lulu or Amazon, I can’t remember. My fourth book The 15 Principles of Fat Loss Success has sold zero on Amazon. The latest of my five, Your Life Activated has also sold zero on Amazon or any other on-line store it is in.

At my gym and with friends and family, I probably sold ten books total. I took this to mean I failed. What happened since is that I stopped marketing them. I stopped writing about them, talking about them, and mentioning them. I accepted defeat (AKA I quit).

A few years ago I started a new training program for small groups of three or four people. These groups were strictly off limits to others not a part of the group. It started off okay and I filled my slots of three people. As time went on, it didn’t work. People went into my normal groups or they quit and then I stopped trying. I accepted defeat. I quit.

Quitting is the only way we can fail. Had I not given up trying to sell my books, I might have sold the stock I have in my possession. Had I not given up trying to sell spots in my small group private training classes, they would probably be booked. But I let my emotions and feelings get the best of me and accepted failure.

When people fail in the gym, it’s not because they can’t do it. It’s because they accept not trying again. When you don’t lose weight there is probably only one or two things that went wrong that can easily be changed. The problem is, most people accept quitting as an option and therefore, they experience failure.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We have the power inside to keep trying. We have the resources available all around us to get the help we deserve and to make it work this time. You have the desire for success. You have the desire to live activated. You have the desire to feel the best you have ever felt. You have the strength to face poor results and learn from them and fight back. The question is, will you do it?

“The easiest thing to do for most people when facing an obstacle is to quit. With this mentality most people die without ever reaching their full potential in any aspect of life.

You must understand your worth, and your desire to succeed must remain strong even on your toughest of days.

I remember the three or four months at the end of last year where I was getting crushed in my Jiu Jitsu training. I went those four months without tapping anyone out. I was getting put into submission after submission and I was always on my back. Not a good place to be when rolling and it began to discourage me. I would see guys that started the same time as me getting taps and they looked confident.

Those same guys would run through me like a hot knife in butter and no matter what I did, I was still losing. Going for a few months without any “little wins” was very hard and in my time as a personal trainer, many people who go that long without a little win end up quitting. They lose confidence in their ability and they don’t want to fail anymore.

Instead of quitting I enjoyed the process. I knew that as a white belt and a “newbie” it was part of my journey to get crushed and destroyed. So what did I do? I listened to every piece of advice my coaches gave me and I put them into action. Ninety percent of the time my efforts in doing what they told were curtailed by my training partner, but nonetheless, I kept at it.

One day, I won. I got a beautifully executed rear naked choke against a training partner with high energy and a lot of skill. My confidence shot through the roof.

Sometimes though, our confidence doesn’t go up and despite our efforts it seems we stay stuck. The truth is, we can change our state and our confidence in a split second when we consciously choose to. Below I give you five tips to help you boost your confidence. I use these five tips still to this day. Boosting confidence is something we must do daily because staying “up” doesn’t happen effortlessly.

1. Use Affirmations for your Greatness

If you’ve ever read any books or listened to any tapes from Louise Hay you’ll know some powerful affirmations. I have on my iPhone six audios from Louise Hay and listen to them daily. Her affirmations are some of the best I ever read. You can quickly google them and see thousands of pictures of powerful affirmations she teaches and uses. But you can’t expect to say them once or twice and be good. They need to be repeated thousands of times and if you don’t believe you are or have what the affirmation says, keep saying it anyway.

2. Do an extra workout

Feeling down? Feel discouraged? Jump up and down and get your body moving. When we feel a lack of confidence, a quick ten or twenty minute workout can change a lot of things for your mindset. Exercise is powerful in helping your emotions and feelings. Often when someone is discouraged due to the lack of their results in weight loss, an extra workout can change the game for them. Even though you feel discouraged and feel like quitting, do one more before you make a rash decision.

3. Write a Journal about Your Greatness

Grab a notebook and write all of the awesome things about you. Write about your dreams, your goals, what you see for yourself in the future and what you wish you can do today. Write your fantasies and write your problems. Write about your lack of confidence. Write a story about how you’re a badass warrior forced to face your confidence villain in an ultimate battle of control. Write about the weapon your warrior is going to use to slay the confidence villain and then kick the shit out of your doubts.

4. Read A War Story

I started listening to the Jocko Podcast and during the episodes he often reads from a book written by a solider about war. The epic stories of loss, devastation, crippling effects, and effort are so powerful they make all of your problems and doubts look tiny. There is no better way to put your life in perspective then by hearing the stories of men and women losing friends and fellow soldiers in battle. The hardships they faced in the trenches and being able to survive can motivate you to look at weight loss or whatever it is you face as a tiny matter that you’ll easily win.

5. Treat Yourself to YOU Time

For me, Jiu Jitsu is me time. It’s my time to forget about being a father, a husband, and fitness coach. It’s my time to forget about bills, to forget about cutting the grass, to forget about my problems with writer’s block, to forget about my problems with my strength workouts, and to forget about being someone people look to for answers. It’s my time to overcome my demons and train my mind to be better. Find yourself time to do something for yourself. That could flotation, meditation, yoga, a shopping trip, a trip to your favorite bar, a bite to eat at your favorite diner. Whatever it is, treat yourself to it and tell yourself that not only do you deserve it but that you earned it and by doing it you’ll become better. When you understand that treating yourself to you time is deserved and earned, being present in those moments will help you become more confident to face your daily life.

One more for good luck and if all else fails in boosting your confidence..

Throw a party at your house and invite the people you love. You don’t need a reason, just say it’s to come hang out and relax. Once you throw your party, look at who is there. Those people care about you. They came to be with YOU. If that doesn’t boost your confidence then you’re not allowing yourself to see your true greatness and you’re not being open to the awesome things that make YOU who YOU are.

Have you ever looked at some task in front of you and thought, there’s no way I can make this work? Yes, you have and so have I. Have you ever set a goal and then erased it because you felt like there was no way you’d ever be able to achieve it? Yes, you have and so have I. This is us setting limits on what we believe is possible and impossible. Some people look at the schedule of my gym and say there is no way they can do five o’clock in the morning. I agree. If they say that it means they think it and if they think it and say it, they’ll most likely believe it and when that happens, they’re right.

Setting limits is nothing new. We used to set limits when we were kids. One of my biggest limitations as a kid was my belief that I couldn’t ride my bike with no hands. I would try and fail. Try and fail. One day I tried and I failed. I landed chin first onto a curb and split my chin open. I walked home crying and bleeding. The cut required a few stitches. From that moment forward I never tried to ride my bike with no hands again. I set a limiting belief that riding with no hands on my bike would result in smashing the ground. The same thing happens to us in every area of life.

One example I see clearly is the limiting belief that “I can’t lose weight.” I see people begin a fitness routine and everything goes well until they step on a scale. Their weight doesn’t drop by five or ten pounds and they get discouraged. Immediately they believe that they can’t lose weight. I even hear them utter those words. Well, when you say it and believe it, it’s probably going to happen. Instead of believing you can’t lose weight and saying so, you need to ask better questions and seek better answers. A question like “What didn’t I do that I can do better?” is a perfect example of a growth oriented question. Asking that question will show you where you need to improve and in doing so, you’ll eliminate the limiting belief.

We often set limits on what we can do based on fear or laziness. When someone tells me they can’t lose weight and they end up quitting because of discouragement it’s because they’re afraid of failing. There may have been numerous times in their life where they tried very hard to get results but something was off and therefore they failed. That failure hurts and to experience it again can be devastating. This is why many people quit. They don’t want to feel the sadness of failing. Setting a limit on what’s possible in your mind can keep you trapped for a very long time. I know people who have spent many years stuck in the same routine of life because of the limits they set, never getting anywhere beyond “the same old same old.”

If you want to live your best life, a life fully activated and in control, you must work on crushing the limits you consciously and subconsciously set in your mind. Limiting beliefs will keep your ship anchored in the same bay it’s been in and the only way to sail the seas is to release that anchor of limit and become the captain of your life.